The 'P' word...

Knocked Up (B) Judd Apatow is the filmmaker Kevin Smith wants to be. Stay with me here. While the both of them make light comedies (featuring chubby guys hooking up with attractive women) and adding a smattering of profane humour, Apatow's clearly the better writer/director. (For one thing, he tends to hire actual professional actors, as opposed to high school buddies and his wife, who can't really act, if you know what I mean...)

In Apatow's movies, the humour is in the characters making accommodations in their lives, and discovering that having a steady relationship is actual work, and while the joy is fleeting, the obligations are never-ending. The comedy comes from finding joy in one's obligations. In this one, stoner Ben (Seth Rogan) gets T.V. worker Alison (Katherine Heigl) pregnant after a fumbly one-nighter, and she decides to 1) keep the baby, and 2) let Ben know about it, and thusly, let him into her life because of the kid. Now, this is, for a lot of 'semi-pro' film critics, where the movie gets weird...

I've seen quite a few of these guys (and one girl) rip on this movie for Allison's decision to have her baby. Huh? I guess since they can't relate to her character, 'bortin' the kid would seem to make the obvious result. The problem with that is, firstly, there'd be no movie. And secondly, it's not like a light comedy intended to highlight the responsibilities (and joy) of being in a committed relationship is meant to be 'pro-life' propaganda.

Knocked Up had several other points that I found extremely endearing, not only for their relative rarity in Hollywood but also for their rarity in America. First, the notion that a child can justify an effort to make a relationship work - I know I'm being terribly old fashioned about it, but the idea that a marriage is not first and foremost a lovely frolic through love candyland, but a very pragmatic social unit with obligations within and without itself is a notion that's quickly being lost. The idea that a couple might stay together "for the children" is treated like some kind of parental Jim Crow law, and the concept that an individual might act in a manner that does not indulge his passions, but serves a more common good is actually given some respect in this film.

The other point the movie makes is that marriage and family is really, really hard. That is, the obligations never end, and the rewards are increasingly intangible. I've looked at the above critics who say that Paul Rudd's (Allison's sister's husband) character is clearly miserable and I don't think that they realize that Paul Rudd's marriage is actually pretty damned typical of any long term relationship. The things he complains about are ubiquitous; the fight he gets in with his wife about spending time together and apart is a fight that every couple who has been together more than two years has repeatedly. He's not unusually miserable, and the marriage is not unusually dysfunctional. They love each other, they love their children, but having a family is work and it looks just like that.

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next up is this parody video of the just-released Halo 3 for the Xbox360. I saw this before the actual promo, and had wanted to give Microsoft 'mad props' for making such a clever and funny take on 'gamer culture'. Since then I've seen the real promo, and it seems... well, kinda lame.

(video)

"Support Our Troops"

What does that mean, anyways? 'Support Our Troops'? The implication, of course, is that we 'support our troops' in their valiant struggle against oppression and fundamentalist control in Afghanistan. (Note: Being a Canadian, I'm talking about Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Sorry, everyone else.) and if we dare question the logic in sending our soldiers off to the World's Largest Litter Box without a specific agenda or return date, we're nothing but Commie-Faggot-Pinko-Puke-Gutted-Twinkle-Toed Scumfucks Whom Should Go Back To Skulking In The Shit-Filled Caves Where Al-Quida and the Demoncrats Are All Hiding. Can't we 'support our troops' by not thinking it's a good idea to dump them in the same spot where the Mongols, the British, and the Soviets all had no luck whatsoever in making an actual country out of a largely hypothetical one? If we're going to put our soldiers in harm's way, wouldn't the best way to 'support' them be to come up with, oh, I don't know...an exit strategy?

You know, let me back up here and try and clarify that statement. 'Support our troops'. Shouldn't it be more specific? How about 'Support our Brave Troops.' Yeah, that works better. Plays on the old heartstrings a bit more. Well, I guess it implies that we've got some not-so-brave troops over there. And heck, call me an old softie, but I think we should support our less-than-brave guys there, as well. Plus, "Support our Brave Troops, but to fuck with the not-so-brave ones" doesn't have the same, simple ring to it, though.

Well, while I'm on the ol' soap box, couldn't the phrase, 'Support our brave troops' imply, 'Support our brave, white, troops', as well? Now, I may be opening a can o' worms here, but I'm pretty sure that some of the boys over there don't just go by 'Scott' and 'Gord'. I bet there's a few 'Jamal's' and 'Umberto's' over there, as well. Last I checked, Canada was a multi-cultural country, and if Sanjeep and Raoul want to sign on in under the Canadian flag, well, welcome aboard, fellas. I'll bet you a dozen Tim-bits you give Paneesh, Chang, and Kwambo their very own M-4 and a set of desert camos, they'll do just as bang-up a job over there as Rick and Rob and Mike.

Then, you've got that tricky possessive pronoun smack dab in the middle there. 'Our'. 'Support OUR troops'. See, I pay taxes in Canada, and my taxes buy Sean and Jafar their plane ride to Kabul. Shouldn't I be getting some return for my investment? We lived in a free market, last I checked. C'mon, guys! Help me out here! Bring back something for me! A shrapnel-torn prayer rug, the skull of a terrorist, gee, even a small ball of opium would do! My taxes buy your bullets! One hand washes the other, is all I'm saying...

In conclusion, if you were to ask me, 'Do you support our troops?', then, by God, I would draw myself up to my full height, take a deep breath, and say, "Yes. Yes, I support our white and non-white, stuck-in-a-moral-quagmire, brave and not-so-brave, can't-even-get-me-a-taxpayer-a-simple-car-air-freshener-that-says-visit-lovely-Kandahar, troops!"

That definitely ain't gonna fit on a bumper sticker, though.

"Sophmoric is Liberal for Funny"

Judd Apatow's low-brow comedies have a lot going for them, particularly in the details. Take, for instance, Superbad (B-). The nerdy heroes, Seth, Evan, and their friend Fogel (who seems to be their friend more by social default than by design) are on a quest to get alcohol for a popular girl's party. By Evan's reasoning, this act will allow them access to said girl's and her friends' underpants and the rewards that lie within. The thing is, these boys are more concerned with getting laid simply to get the act out of the way, then to seek out sexual enjoyment for its own sake.

In a typical teen sex comedy, the protagonists go through a picaresque series of comical misadventures in an effort to get laid, and in the end, give the audience a warm-hearted message to go home with. Usually along the lines of, 'Friendship is important', or 'That hot girl you had a boner for turned out to be a genuinely decent person after all, and she'd be a better friend than a lover' or some other tired nostrum. I wind up being made to feel like I'm paying for my comedy in that case, like the filmmakers felt they had to justify the bawdy humour with a feel-good message.

There's a bittersweet undercurrent in Superbad, and it's about youth's anxiety towards facing an uncertain future, and the inevitable accommodations one must make to navigate one's way through that future. In this case, Seth is upset that his life-long friend Evan is off to Dartmouth with the squeaky-voiced Fogel as a roommate, while Seth has to settle for a local college. Evan is upset that his friend is upset, as well as discovering the aforementioned fact that adulthood is full of accommodations that he's going to have to make. In the course of the movie, they come to realize that perhaps being the guy who procures booze for a popular girl's party is perhaps not the best path to the glories that reside in her panties. And poor Fogel is stuck trying to catch up to Seth and Evan's level of anxiety. (Fogel spends most of the movie in the company of a pair of under-achieving policemen.)

What really makes the movie for me is Micheal Cera's perpetual look of worry throughout. Since 'Arrested Development', he's cornered the market as the living embodiment of teen anxiety. The movie also really has a handle on the profane wit that teenagers display amongst themselves. (Writers Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg came up with the idea in high school.) The MOR soul-funk-r&b soundtrack is oddly appropriate. Only downside; The deluge of t-shirts proclaiming, "Pedro & McLovin for Class President" we're going to get hit with in the near future...

The Bourne Ultimatum - (B-) James Bond for the Target department store crowd. Matt Damon has a knack for portraying a neutral personality, and in the context of this movie, that's not a bad thing. (In my earlier comment on the previews, I offhandedly mentioned that Matthew McConnaghey or some other bland, if talented actor was cast as Bourne. Turns out, I was wrong on that point. The series' success hinges on Damon's bland neutrality...) In this installment, Bourne's struggle to discover how he became who he is gets challenged by an Agency operative trying to cover the agency's trail in creating the sub-structure that made Bourne.

It's a chase movie without an ounce of fat on it, which is where it's appeal lay for me. It doesn't give us any unnecessary back story; no sepia-toned flashbacks about Bourne's pre-Agency past, no angst-laden monologues by Pam Landy(name) over issues of morality. The thing is, this stripped-down level of narrative works against in in one scene where Bourne is with fellow disavowed operative Nicky (Julia Stiles- and why Julia Stiles? Oh, well...) There's a weird tension where you're hoping Bourne and Nicky don't start making out with each other, as it'll ruin the pacing of the entire movie. Damned odd thing to be worrying about in a thriller, I think. Also, director Greengrass' toned down the 'jitter-cam' aspect from the last one, which really helped.

Bioshock -Xbox360 (A-) Nice little fps-with-rpg elements, not unlike Deux ex or System Shock 2. Actually, I believe most of the people who worked on SS2 worked on this one. A survivor of a plane crash enters an underworld city right out of Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' and finds this world's gone to the dogs. (Well, Big Daddys, actually...) The storyline involves finding out why this utopia became a dystopia, and putting a stop to its spreading evil.
What puts Bioshock over the top in terms of the usual video game with a storyline, is not only is the actual story is engaging and complex, and not only is the player's actions tied to the story's outcome, but that the story in this case has a more complex theme than 'good triumphs over evil' or 'rescue the princess' or whateves.

It's a repudiation of the Objectivist ideology of Ayn Rand. (Note the founder of the underwater city's name, 'Andrew Ryan') The storyline points out that in a pure free-market economy, there can be very few winners (Ryan, his few followers, an usurper to Ryan's throne named Fontaine and his followers.) and losers of everyone else in the city. As a result, once a power struggle erupts between Fontaine and Ryan, everyone else's options are limited to a) choosing sides or b) starving to death.

While I don't think 'Bioshock' adds to the debate that video games can be Art (The developer's take on Objectivism is irrelevant to the actual game play, and really, once you've played it through, you're done.) it does make a good argument that a video game can be damn fine satisfying entertainment.